


The Broken Road

by m3aculpa



Category: Glee
Genre: Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-23
Updated: 2010-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 23:49:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m3aculpa/pseuds/m3aculpa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows directly after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/256462">Give In</a>. They're all hurting and struggling to make any sense of their lives. Will Kurt get by with a little help from his friends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Broken Road

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** The Broken Road  
>  **Fandom:** Glee **  
> Rating:** R  
>  **Characters/Pairings:** Kurt, Finn, some Carole and Burt, appearances by Glee club, minor role for Rachel  
>  **Warnings:** Deals with rape recovery, implied rape/gangbang, language, implied violence, can be perceived as Rachel-bashing though she redeems herself at the end  
>  **Word count:** 5417  
>  **Summary** : Follows directly after [Give In](http://archiveofourown.org/works/256462). They're all hurting and struggling to make any sense of their lives. Will Kurt get by with a little help from his friends?  
> 

The ride to the hospital was mostly a blur. Burt had jumped into the ambulance, leaving Finn and Carole to drive to the hospital by themselves. Carole’s face was pale as a ghost’s and her hands shook on the wheel. But she managed to drive them safely to the hospital. It was more than Finn ever could. His mind just keeps replaying those words in his head, when Kurt called himself a whore. He didn’t understand.

They didn’t see Burt when they entered the hospital. Finn beeline for the nurse’s station and demanded to see his brother. She asked for his name, but Finn was too upset to be coherent. He kept yelling at her even when his mum was tugging at him to leave the poor nurse alone. Only when the nurse threatened to call security on them and kick them out of the hospital, did he back down.

“Come on, honey,” Carole said softly, her hand trembling against his arm. “Let’s sit down. You can’t do anything for Kurt anyway at this moment.”

Finn wanted to protest so badly, because of course there had to be a way for him to be there for Kurt. He had to see him! He remembered all the blood and the other unnameable stuff. It made him sick to his stomach. God, he didn’t understand. How could this have happened? Jesse was with them… wasn’t he? Finn had never trusted him, but he had seemed like he really like Rachel. Oh, God, Rachel! Who would tell her? Would she believe them? What if she didn’t? What if she blamed Kurt? He’d been brought up to never hit a girl, but if she blamed Kurt, he didn’t know if he could restrain himself.

There was blood on his jeans. Kurt’s blood. He wanted to burn them. But he couldn’t burn them, because he was wearing them and he didn’t want to be only in his underwear in the hospital. He couldn’t help but staring at it. There had been so much of it. Kurt had trembled so hard against him. And that hopeless crying on the phone… Finn swallowed the lump in his throat. How could somebody ever recover from anything like this?

And Kurt had done it to keep Rachel safe. He’d stopped struggling so Jesse wouldn’t lure her to take Kurt’s place. His stomach cramped and he wanted to heave. Kurt had kept Rachel safe. He was so grateful for that. But it also made him feel ashamed that he was grateful that Kurt had suffered in her place.

“Finn, honey,” his mum’s voice invaded his thoughts and she took hold of his hands. “Let go. You’re hurting yourself.”

Only then did he realise that he’d been digging his hands into his thighs. He winced when he let go. It hurt. But it couldn’t compare to the mess inside of him. He didn’t know what he felt. It was all so hopelessly messy. Rachel or Kurt would probably use some big word that would describe it perfectly. He didn’t know a word like that.

His mum tugged at his arm again and he followed helplessly. She hugged him tightly and he buried his face in her chest. She smelled of flowery soap and a smell that just was _her_. It brought tears to his eyes. The dam broke and he started bawling. He gripped her tightly and burrowed down to hide his face. He hadn’t cried so hard since he was seven and somebody (Karofsky) had made fun of him for being father-less.

He cried himself dry and then he kept sobbing into her chest. She was also crying. Not the child-like sobbing of when they had found Kurt. It was soft as if she didn’t want him to hear it. She was protecting him. Finn held her tighter. He was slightly ashamed. He was a man. It should be the other way around. He should be comforting her. But he just couldn’t find the strength. Not while he kept hearing that awful crying, like Kurt had no hope anymore…

He awkwardly rested against her when they both stopped crying. Neither of them took any notice of the people staring at them. Let them stare. They had been through hell this evening. Now all they could do was wait.

Carole shifted beneath her son and her soft, questioning voice woke him from his daze,

“Burt?”

Finn raised his head. Burt stood in front of them, clutching his hat in his hand, and looking helpless. It made Finn’s stomach drop even more. Burt was scary as hell when he was mad and he should be mad at the bastard who had done this. But he looked helpless and lost and Finn needed him to know what they should do.

“They… uhm… They had to sedate him for the exam. The r-rape kit,” Burt quietly said, stumbling over his words. “He’ll sleep for a while, which is probably the best.” He swallowed noisily and brushed away a few tears, while trying to keep it together. “They had to give him stitches… there were tears. There’s a risk for an infection, the doctor said. His wrists needed bandaging and his hip was dislocated.” He breathed in shakily. “The bruising and tearing indicates… indicates that there was either multiple assailants or rapes.”

Finn felt faint. There was roaring in his ears and he almost passed out. Burt’s face had crumpled when he said the last part and he moved. His fist slammed into the wall and Carole flinched. The older man turned toward them, looking lost and confused and in pain.

“He is my _son_ , Carole,” he said. “He is my boy. He and the tire shop, it is all I have. How could anybody do this to my son?”

She spread her arms and Burt hugged her fiercely. Finn wrapped his arms around them both.

The rest of the people in the waiting room left them alone.

\---------

He kept tossing and turning. It wasn’t guilt that kept Jesse St. James up that night. No, it was the memories and the arousal that came with them. Despite the fact that he’d already come three times that very evening, he was aching and hard again.

He closed his eyes and slid his hand down to his cock. He wrapped his fingers around it and groaned. He fit his finger tight around his cock and started to pump. God, Hummel had been _tight_. Painfully so. Taking his virginity had been amazing. The soft whimpers, barely audible around one of his team mates’ cock, made his cock jump at the remembrance. He had to slow down not to come prematurely.

Watching his team mates taking him and seeing those tears… exquisite. Jesse moaned and pumped himself harder. Kurt had been hot. It had been so easy to get him to comply and not scream or bite. And that mouth… seeing those sarcastic lips wrapped around his cock had made him come prematurely. He would never have made good of his threats to call Rachel. Kurt was the one they wanted. Besides, he was more well-liked than Rachel was. It would break New Directions

He remembered the broken noises when Kurt’s body betrayed him. It made him groan loudly and come in hard, short spurts all over his hand.

No matter what happened next: it had been worth it.

\----------

The police came to talk them in the morning. They’d been forced to leave the hospital and Kurt, who still slept as the result of the sedative. So they sat in the living room while the large police officer told them what they had found at the crime scene. The table bearing claw marks, the ropes, more semen and a spreader bar. Finn didn’t know what a spreader bar was. When he got the answer, he wished he hadn’t asked. But now they knew how Kurt’s hip had been dislocated.

The police man, officer MacLeod, spoke to Burt and Carole first. But they had only been there for the rescue and drive to the hospital. They didn’t know how Finn had found out where Kurt was. But they all had solid alibis, so the officer didn’t seem to find it suspicious.

Carole had to be present during the questioning, so she sat next to Finn with her hand on his arm. It made him feel safe and comforted. He needed his mum more now than he wanted to admit. Burt had gone to the hospital to see if Kurt was awake.

“I need you to tell me everything, Finn, as detailed as you possibly can,” the officer asked, but he seemed almost bored. “Take just as long as you need. We can take a break whenever you need to.”

Finn nodded and swallowed hard. His throat was strangely dry. But he began to tell the officer about how Rachel, a member of their glee club he clarified when asked, had asked Kurt to drive her boyfriend home after practice. Kurt hadn’t come home afterward and wasn’t answering his phone. The glee club had mobilised to look for him and Rachel had called Jesse to ask him if he knew where Kurt was.

“Wait,” he suddenly realised and felt queasy. “When she called him, she was complaining that there was a lot of noise in the background. Jesse said that he was at a party, but Kurt said… that must have meant… the noise was while they were… doing stuff to Kurt!”

The officer raised an eyebrow, but continued to take notes. Finn told him about how somebody had called him from Kurt’s phone. He shivered when he voiced his impression of how the crying had sounded.

“It was like… like there was no hope, you know? Like he’d given up,” he told this more to his mum than the police. “I didn’t even realise it was Kurt. It gave me chills. I sat there frozen until the text came. With the address. We went there and…”

Nothing could have prepared him for what met them there. He had to take a break and his mum got him a glass of water. He didn’t drink it, but rather fiddled with it. He rushed his word when he told the officer of how they’d found Kurt lying naked on the floor and all the blood and white stuff and he finished with the ambulance arriving.

MacLeod finished writing and looked up with a smile. It didn’t feel very nice. It felt rather fake.

“You did great, Finn,” he said. “But I need you to clarify a few things for me. Your,” he checked his notes, “stepbrother? He’s gay, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. So?” Finn frowned. Then it clicked. “You can’t seriously say that Kurt… that Kurt wanted this?!”

The officer tapped his pen against his notepad. “Well, it might just have got out of hand. He was having an affair with your friend’s boyfriend and didn’t want to get into trouble.”

There’s a growl, but it wasn’t coming from Finn. He felt like he had been sucker-punched in the stomach. The police was supposed to help them, wasn’t he? Why was he saying such awful stuff? It wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. Didn’t MacLeod see how small and helpless Kurt was? How could he say that?

Carole suddenly reeled back and slapped the officer across the face. She looked livid and Finn realised that the growl had came from her. She was growling about stitches, dislocated hips and rope burns. The police officer held his cheek and gaped at her. Then he flushed angrily and snapped at her,

“That’s assault of a police officer, ma’am,” he said snidely. “I could have you arrested for it.”

“Try it,” Carole hissed threateningly and she was way scarier than MacLeod could ever hope to be. “Then I’ll tell your superiors what you implied about a sixteen year old, hospitalised rape _victim_! Have you looked at the doctor’s report? Then you’d know that it isn’t possible that it was consensual!”

Finn didn’t understand everything. What he understood was that the police might not get Jesse. And he couldn’t let that happened. So he called Puck when the police left his house. He told the other in no uncertain terms that he had not forgiven him. Then he told the censored version of what Jesse had done.

“We need to fuck him up,” Puck said and Finn was surprised to hear the rage in his voice.

The day after they put their plan in motion a week later, the DNA results were in. No hits, but they found sixteen DNA samples that did not belong to Kurt. Sixteen. Finn ran out of the room and vomited until he didn’t have anything left in his stomach. Even after that he kept dry-heaving until his throat was sore.

When the police, after having taken Kurt’s statement, arrested Jesse, he was seriously roughed up. A cracked rib, the others bruised, and missing just few teeth. The police suspected Finn immediately and Puck by association, but Jesse didn’t tell. He admitted to what he had done and named his accomplices.

The ball was passed over to the court to decide what to do with them.

\-------

When he woke from his sedated sleep, Kurt was understandably confused. He wondered since when his bed was this hard and since when he’d use a cheap cotton-blend bed sheets. But as he pried his eyes open, he was not met with the Dior-grey walls of his room. The white walls of the hospital room brought it all back and they had to sedate him again so he wouldn’t tear his stitches.

He didn’t speak during those first days when his family came by. It clearly broke his dad’s heart, but Kurt _literally_ couldn’t speak. His throat would close up when he tried. He was so sure that his dad would be ashamed of him. After all, not only had he let them do that to him, he had also come when Jesse fucked him the last time. He couldn’t even remember how many guys had fucked him! His dad must be so fucking ashamed to have such a whore of a son…

The police came to get his statement. He didn’t want to speak at first. But then Finn had caught his eyes. All that worry, the warm concern, the confused heartbreak, it made him break down. The police had to come the next day and the doctors had to give Kurt a mild sedative so he wouldn’t panic too much. He stared at the ceiling while he explained how Jesse had tricked him to come to the abandoned house – it turned out that it was up for sale. How he had discovered that his Navigator had been sabotaged and trying to fight back when the guys from Vocal Adrenaline had surrounded him.

He told his story in a monotone, detached tone of voice. He didn’t want to admit that it had happened to him. The tears that ran down his face… he didn’t acknowledge them. He told the officer of how they had carried him into the house and ripped his shirt off before carrying him up the stairs. He went slightly of track while complaining about how expensive his shirt was. His mind was trying to protect him.

With some strangely careful prodding from officer MacLeod, who seemed to be afraid of his father, he continued. He whispered that he’d thought that they were only going to beat him up. That he hadn’t understood what they were intending until Jesse had told him. Despite his struggling, they had managed to tear off his jeans. Kurt heard his dad’s shuddering breaths in the background of his story. He wanted to comfort him, wanted to reach out, but felt that he was too tainted to do that. Jesse’s hands and words were deep in beneath his skin.

 _… just imagine… that after… tonight… you’ll be as loose as some random whore…_

The words rose unbidden in his head and he shuddered. He needed to collect his breath, before he glossed over the pain and the suffering. The officer asked if he knew how many assailants there were, but he didn’t. He’d been disoriented. The officer looked uncomfortably down in his notebook and tapped the pen against it.

“That’s understandable,” he murmured. “If you feel that you’re up to it, please continue, mister Hummel.”

Kurt made a face, because mister Hummel was his dad, but didn’t remark on it. Instead he picked with the hospital blanket. He couldn’t find a way to voice the rest of the story. He was too ashamed. He had come… that must have meant that he enjoyed it somehow, right? How could he tell his dad that he had actually… ejaculated and felt pleasure that night?

“Mister Hummel, could you identify any of your attackers?” the officer asked when it was clear no continuation was forth-coming.

“J-jesse St. James,” he stuttered nervously. “I am sure that the rest were members of Vocal Adrenaline, but I’ve only seen a few of them at their invitational.”

Then it spilled forth. The shameful truth about how Jesse had taken him once again and how he’d got off on it. His dad was crying, but he couldn’t look at him. He stared down at the blanket that was bundled in his hands. He refused to meet their looks. The sound of a pen closing and the chair scraping against the floor, made him look up. The officer touched his shoulder awkwardly and Kurt tensed beneath his hand.

“As far as I understand,” officer MacLeod explained and sent a timid look in Burt’s direction, “as the doctor explained to me, the male reproductive organs is just a bundle of nerves. So is the prostate. When stimulated… those areas create sexual arousal. It’s involuntary.”

He steadily looked into Kurt’s watery eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. Don’t let anybody tell you that.”

(It would later appear to Finn as if Kurt’s story and the evidence had made MacLeod examine his prejudices and assumptions to realise that it was something horrifying that had happened Kurt and that he’d been way out of line – though Finn would probably have phrased it somewhere along the lines ‘MacLeod realised he was being an ass-hat’).

He was released from the hospital later, but had to be confined to a wheelchair so he wouldn’t tear the stitches and do something worse to his hip. Fortunately Schue’s lesson of supporting Artie turned out to be helpful – Kurt could manoeuvre rather easily in his chair. Unfortunately he couldn’t crawl into his basement and hide like he wanted to. Instead he was confined to the sofa in the living room.

After just a couple of hours, he felt smothered. They all meant well, but Burt and Finn was telegraphing their actions unnecessarily clearly. Yes, Kurt felt skittish and raw and vulnerably. He still wouldn’t freak out if they didn’t tell him what they were doing (except that he _did_ freak out badly when Finn accidentally snuck up on him). But worst was probably Carole’s soft, teary eyes as she heaped pile after pile of unhealthy food on his plate and the way she would just randomly hug him.

The Glee club came by to show their support. He didn’t have much energy to deal with them, but forced himself to. He didn’t want to hurt them even more than this had already done. But when he voiced that he felt guilty for their suffering, Mercedes let go a long tirade against him and how it wasn’t his fault. She hugged him and promised him a trip to the mall when he was feeling up to it. He managed a half-hearted comment about her t-shirt (seriously, what was _up_ with her obsession of neon-coloured animal prints? Leopard pattern was _so_ not meant to be a shrill pink).

Brittany dove for the couch the moment she came inside the door. She wiggled and moved until she was spooning him from behind. Her grip on him was tight, but reassuringly female. She murmured reassurances that barely made sense (‘No, there wasn’t a stampede of unicorns and I’m not that hurt.’) and forced Kurt to comfort her (‘Brittany, I am not dying. Here, honey, take this and blow.’). Santana watched them silently before coming over to sit next to them on the couch. She grabbed his hand and held tight, but didn’t say a thing. It was alright – Santana Lopez didn’t do comforting after all. He made sure to hug her, though. She acted like it was nothing, but her hands lingered on him a little too long.

Mike and Matt came by together. Mike showed him this new dance routine he had been working on – a mixture of traditional Chinese dance and his usual ‘pop-and-locking’. It looked positively demented and absurd. So much so it made him laugh. But it was strangely beautiful. And Matt didn’t say much. He just sat next Kurt on the sofa and his quiet heat didn’t make him fearful at all. Matt was like a rock in the sea: nothing would throw him off. Kurt secretly appreciated his silence after all the hovering and mother-hen routine that Finn was doing. Honestly, the boy was adorable when he was concerned, but he was like an extremely clumsy puppy. Luckily he was cute; otherwise Kurt would be unable to stand to be near him.

Puck was honestly almost as bad. The first time he pulled the big-brother routine, Kurt had to take a double-take. And had to ask if Noah was feeling alright. The boy had huffed and explained that he couldn’t stand to see chicks crying (‘Stop shrieking, Hummel, I know you’re a dude. But you’re an honorary girl so it counts’ – and you can’t argue with Puck’s logic, or rather lack of it). Puck actually was a big brother with a younger sister, so he knew what he was doing. He could deal with Kurt’s tears and mood swings with ease. But if he asked whether Kurt was on his period one more time, Kurt would take a kitchen knife to Puckzilla. Consider yourself warned, Puck.

Even mister Schue seemed to have developed some protective instincts. He came by and told him that when he returned to school, McKinley High would support him without question. He also told him to ignore Sue’s letter (in which she threatened to throw him out of Cheerios if he didn’t get back to practice soon – and a dislocated hip was not an excuse). Kurt didn’t have the heart to tell him that coach Sylvester was scarier than him. And ultimately would win in any power struggle.

Tina had started stuttering again, despite them all knowing that it had been a fake before. It made him nervous, truth be told. He was relieved when she let Artie do most of the talking. Artie greeting him as ‘Kurt my man’ had made him smile. He felt safe with Artie in a way that was similar to Matt and it had nothing to do with the chair. Artie didn’t look at him differently (‘Well that sucks, I hope the bastard rots in hell, here, I got this for you’). He’d given him the first two seasons of Torchwood and told him that according to his friends season three was an abomination that should never be watched. Jack and Ianto’s relationship had him alternating between awing and being insanely jealous. And yes, he’d admit that he cried when Ianto asked Jack to dance during Gwen’s wedding.

Rachel was the last one to come see him. She apologised to him quietly. She had blamed him, she admitted. She had believed Jesse over him and had hid him from the police. It was the first time Kurt saw Finn truly angry and he thought that he would hit her. Kurt made him leave the room before he exploded in Rachel’s face.

“I’m so, so sorry, Kurt,” she said with mournful eyes and blinked away tears at Finn’s rejection. “I let Jesse’s talent and good looks and our musical compatibility trick me into believing that he actually had a soul. You are my team mate and I should have trusted you instead of some soulless automaton.”

Typical Rachel Berry. When she told him she had blamed him, it felt like it was confirming his own believes. He was very confused that she no longer thought he was to blame. It befuddled him.

“What made you realise?” Kurt was curious to know.

“Jesse, he…” she bit her lip in hesitation. “He was staying at my place. I woke up, hearing him mumble in his sleep. I can’t sleep unless there is perfectly quiet in my room and a good night’s sleep is important for a future star like me.”

“Rachel,” he reminded when she got off on her rambling tracks again.

“Right.” She looked down at her hands in her lap and repeated as if trying to reassure herself. “Right. He was murmuring in his sleep. I was about to wake him, when I thought I heard him mumble your name. Then I heard that it was definitely your name he was mumbling. And he was aroused.” There were tears in her eyes. “Kurt, he was dreaming about what he did to you. I realised that it was true and I had only been deluding myself. I woke my dads up and we called to cops on him.”

Kurt barely heard what she was saying by the end. There were a roaring sound in his ears and his stomach was turning itself inside out. He fought the nausea. But it was just too strong and he was crying.

“Bucket,” he hissed desperately.

Rachel looked at him questioning, before realisation hit. She grabbed the bucket Burt had put by the sofa for the bad nightmares. Kurt barely held back the vomit until she had got it under him. He hunched over and retched painfully. There was barely anything in his stomach to expel. But his body kept trying, as if it would cleanse him from the memories.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” somebody shouted from across the room.

“I don’t know,” Rachel tearfully and rather hysterically yelled. “We were talking and then he turned pale and I don’t know!”

“Not her fault,” he managed to say before retching again for several long minutes. “Flashback.”

Finn gave Rachel a hard, suspicious stare. Once Kurt would have been over the moon if Finn showed any displeasure toward Rachel, but he didn’t want Finn like that anymore. He needed him as his brother. There would probably be a long time until he wanted anything of romantic nature again. His stomach rolled just at the thought.

He waved away the bucket and Finn took it to get cleaned out. That left the two frenemies alone in an awkward silence.

“Sorry,” Rachel broke it in a small voice.

“Not your fault. It is that bastard J-jesse’s fault,” he replied and cursed loudly when he stumbled over the name.

He hated the power Jesse still had over him. He wanted to get better. He wanted to get his life back.

“When’s the trial?” Rachel asked when she was sure he wouldn’t break.

“Next week,” Kurt said and hugged himself. “They recorded my testimony as the D.A. felt that it would be detrimental to my health if I had to testify in person.” He winced. “They do that sometimes when it comes to young children. I guess they think that the crime was so heinous that they don’t want me in the room as my assailants.”

Rachel actually reached out and touched his arm. She wasn’t big on physical contact, he had noticed. Unless it was in routine. He somehow wryly recalled how she’d been pawing him in some of her routines and how uncomfortable it had made him. He wasn’t big on physical contact that he didn’t initiate, either.

“Good,” she said and her eyes burned with conviction. “One of my dads is a lawyer and he says there’s no chance in hell that they will get away with it. They’re going to pay, Kurt.”

A tear slipped down his cheek. He was so tired of crying! But so was Rachel and she was actually hugging him now. Somehow that made him feel okay about crying. He melted into her arms. To think that Rachel Berry would comfort him one day… just a couple of weeks back it would have been absurd.

“It wasn’t your fault, Kurt,” she whispered and tightened her grip on him when he tried to get free. “No, listen. It wasn’t your fault. I was acting stupidly and selfishly when I blamed you. I didn’t want to admit that I had been blind.” She took a shuddering breath. “That I was wrong. But I was. And you paid for it. I brought Jesse into our circle. Finn told me that Jesse threatened to make me take your place if you didn’t comply. I’m not as strong as you are, Kurt. It would have killed me.”

“It wasn’t your fault, either,” he mumbled.

“And it wasn’t yours,” she concluded. “The only one to blame is Jesse and his mindless drones. You are family, Kurt. A member of our glee family. We will always stand by you. We will stand by you until this is over and Jesse gets what he truly deserves.”

Kurt smiled shakily. “Thank you.”

She had to go, but she hugged him one more time and told him that it wasn’t his fault before she left. He was sitting on the sofa in the living room, all alone. It was the first time he was alone in days. Before he had been so crowded that he couldn’t process what had happened. He had only felt that fear and shame that was instinctive. But now something else was bubbling under the surface: rage.

How _dare_ Jesse do that to him? How _dare_ they take away his body, use it as their plaything, and try to make him think it is his _fault_? He rose from the couch in fury. Before he knew it, he let lose an angry shriek. And then he was tearing through the house, kicking chairs and throwing all the china in the kitchen that he could reach. All the while he was panting in exertion and growling in fury between the bursts of air. He was so fucking angry he felt like destroying the entire world.

It was gone as soon as it had begun. He slid down along the kitchen cupboards and cried. He was crying loudly and messily. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that it had happened to him. Why had they done it? Why had they done this to him? _Why_? His body didn’t feel like his own anymore. He could never go back to the moment before Vocal Adrenaline had attacked him. He would never feel that comfortable in his own skin anymore. But he had to take back control over his body _somehow._

“Kurt,” Finn asked from the doorway, eyes wide in shock. “Dude, are you okay? Burt is going to kill me.”

Kurt just laughed. Finn hurried forward, avoiding the shards, and offered him a hand up. Kurt looked at that hand. The hand belonging to one of the arms that had held him after that night. That had made feel marginally safer. With a smile he grabbed it and hauled himself up. He didn’t even wince at the pain in his lower body.

“Help me down in the basement, please?” he asked.

He tamed his hair back to his normal soon. His skin was a disaster zone and he mourned the fact that it would take weeks for him to get it back into shape. The jeans he picked maybe was a tad more baggy than he would have chosen before and the shirt not quite as eye-catching. But it was better than the loose sweats and flannel shirt he’d been hiding in lately.

There would be setbacks; days when he would be too depressed to comb his hair or take care of his skin or dress nicely. He probably would be too depressed to get out of bed on those days. There would be nightmares and flashbacks, but he could try to move forward now.

The diva wasn’t back yet.

But there was hope that he would be.

 


End file.
